


Precarious

by Purna



Category: White Collar
Genre: Multi, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-27
Updated: 2009-10-27
Packaged: 2018-12-04 09:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11552289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purna/pseuds/Purna
Summary: It's been five years.





	Precarious

It's been five years. Five years since Peter's gaze met hers like this, melting and wanting, bedroom eyes without the bed, and someone else in the room with them. With someone like Neal on the sofa between them, someone who's soft and hard all mixed together. Someone who makes Peter bluster and flush, and turn that gaze towards hers. He wants this.

She lets her gaze wander over Neal's perfect lips. His profile is pure Greek sculpture, and she thinks about making it real with a kiss. Neal looks at her, his eyes crinkling; he knows what she's thinking. Generous with his affections and sharing the moment, Neal looks over at Peter. It's not until then that a subtle tension eases in El. 

It'd been half a test, and Neal had passed. 

Neal somehow senses her approval, nods his acceptance. His smile is for El, brilliant, unfeigned, but his eyes don't leave Peter's, and it lights up all three of them for a moment, a circuit completed. 

He really likes us, she thinks, and wonders if it's part of what makes him the perfect con man. He's beautiful, but the looks pale against his chameleon charm. It's in every playful glance, in his body language and posture: I can be whatever you want me to be.

Peter is watching her as she watches Neal. She meets his gaze again and feels a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She tilts her head to the side, considering, as she holds Peter's eyes. Peter echoes the pose, and the mimicry is telling. He wants this very badly.

Peter's always said that she's the one who started it, five years ago. She's never disputed the claim; Peter's more comfortable with the lie. It'd been Alan back then, El and Alan and Peter, sitting on a park bench all in a row. They'd met Alan at the dog park on a beautiful spring morning, buds opening, sap rising. Satchmo had bonded with Alan's spaniel at first sight, instant best friends. 

Instant best friends, just like Alan and Peter, only best friends didn't look at each other quite like that. There was an undercurrent when the three of them were together, a dance of sorts. It was a waltz of smiles and eyes and tentative touches, and if Peter was the one to start it, El and Alan weren't far behind. It made El dizzy sometimes, because waltzing with one person was hard enough. But Peter wanted it. 

She'd wanted it too, she knows--the sudden sense memory of Peter, caught between her and Alan, moving into her with the rhythms of another man behind him, is too searing to deny.

Whatever it was, it felt fragile, precarious. And sure enough, Peter had been crushed when Alan eventually moved away, the starving New York actor finally giving in to the heady lure of LA. 

El pulls herself out of the memory. Alan's done and done, and Neal is here and now, for Peter and for her.

When Neal leans forward on the sofa between them, El reaches out a hand behind him towards Peter. On the way, she brushes the tips of her fingers against the nape of Neal's neck, provoking a shiver. She clasps Peter's shoulder, solid and warm under the drab fabric of his favorite suit. 

El nods at her husband, a slow deliberate movement, and Peter's eyes widen. His mouth is opening, his hand reaching out for her, but he subsides when she mouths the word at him. Patience. 

It's morning, time for work, and she's always been one to enjoy the journey as much as its destination. She's stifling a laugh when she speaks.

"I think it's about time you boys got to work."


End file.
